Marine Nationale on The Race Lab

Marine Nationale's Exit Hands Majborough a Poisoned Chalice

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Marine Nationale won’t defend his Champion Chase crown. A sore neck, picked up overnight, means Barry Connell’s nine-year-old misses next Wednesday’s showpiece, and the horse who demolished Jonbon by 18 lengths last March won’t get the chance to do it again.

That leaves Majborough. Willie Mullins’ second-season chaser is now 8/11 with most firms, having strolled to a 19-length win in the Dublin Chase five weeks ago. On the face of it, that looks like a formality.

Barry Connell's Cheltenham Numbers Are Quietly Absurd

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Barry Connell trains a handful of horses on 45 acres in Kildare. He doesn’t have 250 in the yard. He doesn’t have a conveyor belt of six-figure store horses arriving each autumn. What he does have is a Cheltenham record that makes no statistical sense for an operation his size.

Since the start of the 2022-23 season, Connell has sent 56 runners to Cheltenham across all meetings. Three of those have won at the Festival itself: Marine Nationale in the 2023 Supreme (9/2), Seddon in the Plate that same week (20/1), and Marine Nationale again in last year’s Champion Chase (5/1). That’s a 5.4% win rate at the track overall, which sounds modest until you consider the calibre of races he’s targeting.

Marine Nationale's Champion Chase Defence: Can Connell's Hero Overturn a 19-Length Dublin Drubbing?

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Barry Connell doesn’t do things by half. The former stockbroker who never sat on a horse until he was 30 has built a state-of-the-art yard at Boherbaun, complete with open barns designed around airflow and horse welfare. At the centre of it all stands Marine Nationale — two-time Cheltenham Festival winner and the horse whose Champion Chase victory last March carried an emotional weight that went far beyond racing.

That 18-length romp at Prestbury Park came just weeks after the tragic death of Michael O’Sullivan, the jockey who’d been instrumental in Marine Nationale’s early career. It was a day nobody at Cheltenham will forget in a hurry.

Marine Nationale vs Majborough: The Cheltenham Rematch That Really Matters

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:15:00 +0000

The 19-length beating Majborough handed Marine Nationale at Leopardstown three weeks ago should have settled the Champion Chase argument. It hasn’t.

Barry Connell isn’t backing down. Neither is the formbook, which paints a very different picture when you filter for Prestbury Park.

The Cheltenham Factor

Marine Nationale is 2-for-2 at the Festival. Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2023. Champion Chase defence last March. Two Grade 1s, two wins, two different types of ground — soft for the Supreme, good to soft for the Champion Chase.